This paper proposes and showcases a methodology to develop an observational behavior assessment instrument to assess psychological competencies of police officers. We outline a step-by-step methodology for police organizations to measure and evaluate behavior in a meaningful way to assess these competencies. We illustrate the proposed methodology with a practical example. We posit that direct behavioral observation can be key in measuring the expression of psychological competence in practice, and that psychological competence in practice is what police organizations should care about. We hope this paper offers police organizations a methodology to perform scientifically informed observational behavior assessment of their police officers’ psychological competencies and inspires additional research efforts into this important area.
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The main purpose of the research was the development and testing of an assessment tool for the grading of Dutch students' performance in information problem solving during their study tasks. Scholarly literature suggests that an analytical scoring rubric would be a good tool for this.Described in this article are the construction process of such a scoring rubric and the evaluation of the prototype based on the assessment of its usefulness in educational practice, the efficiency in use and the reliability of the rubric. To test this last point, the rubric was used by two professors when they graded the same set of student products. 'Interrater reliability' for the professors' gradings was estimated by calculating absolute agreement of the scores, adjacent agreement and decision consistency. An English version of the scoring rubric has been added to this journal article as an appendix. This rubric can be used in various discipline-based courses in Higher Education in which information problem solving is one of the learning activities. After evaluating the prototype it was concluded that the rubric is particularly useful to graders as it keeps them focussed on relevant aspects during the grading process. If the rubric is used for summative evaluation of credit bearing student work, it is strongly recommended to use the scoring scheme as a whole and to let the grading work be done by at least two different markers. [Jos van Helvoort & the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals-Information Literacy Group]
A considerable amount of the required information in risk and emergency management is geographical, but this information does not always reach the right actors at the right time, so how can geographical information be organised in such a way that it supports risk and emergency management more effectively? The answer requires a conceptualisation of risk and emergency management practices resulting in the network-centric concept, which implies that those involved in risk and emergency management are connected and that they have the capability to share and access information. The concept was made operational through the development of an information system and the exchange of geographical information within the system was facilitated by the use of peer-to-peer networking in combination with a client server network. On the application level, the information was presented in both map and text forms to support the exchange of information between actors. This way of organising geographical information and technology leads to improved information and communication, better situational awareness and faster decisionmaking.
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